Cup marks are among the most common yet least understood features of prehistoric rock art: shallow, roughly circular depressions pecked into stone, found across Ireland and Britain, and thought to date broadly to the Neolithic or Bronze Age. Their purpose remains genuinely uncertain.

The stone was first recorded by G.H. Kinahan in 1884, who described it in some detail. He placed it in a field locally known as "fort field", on a south-facing slope in what is now improved pasture, and measured it at roughly five feet by five-and-a-third feet across, standing three-and-a-third feet high. He counted eleven cup marks on its surface. When the site was revisited in 1990, the field had been cleared of loose stone, and a stone of approximately the right dimensions was found repositioned in the north-east field boundary. The cup-marked surfaces, however, were no longer visible, buried or turned inward by whatever agricultural work had moved it.

What lingers about this record is the particular quality of the loss. The stone almost certainly still exists, Kinahan's measurements are precise enough to be convincing, and the local name "fort field" hints at a landscape that was once understood to hold something of significance. Whether the cup marks face downward into the earth or are simply obscured by soil and vegetation, they have not been seen since the Victorian era.